BUENA PARK, Calif. — Karl Busche still can’t believe how big Knott’s Berry Farm’s Boysenberry Festival has grown.
As the product development merchandise manager for Knott’s Berry Farm, he was tasked with selecting a few merchandise items to sell in conjunction with the small and limited boysenberry food and drink menu in 2014. Back then, it was a two-week festival.
He recalls that there were very few food items on the tasting menu.
“I remember we only had a few items. But once we expanded the food items, it just blew up,” said Busche. “People love our boysenberry history.”
This year, Knotts' Berry Farm celebrates the 10th anniversary of its popular Boysenberry Festival. The food and wine celebration, which runs from March 28 to April 27, pays tribute to the theme park’s boysenberry beginnings.
Anaheim horticulturist Rudolph Boysen created the boysenberry, a hybrid of blackberries, loganberries, and raspberries, in the 1920s.
Boysen couldn’t capitalize on the fruit due to a series of misfortunes: his partner Douglas Coolidge died and Boysen broke his back in an accident.
During the Great Depression, Walter Knott contacted Boysen about growing and selling the hybrid fruit on his Buena Park farm. Knott named the fruit after Boysen, the Boysenberry.
Knott developed and popularized the hybrid fruit. He first sold it on his roadside farm, made it into jam, and soon incorporated it into his wife’s famous Southern fried chicken dinners.
Mrs. Knott’s Fried Chicken restaurant became so popular, with people waiting hours in line, that Knott created a series of side attractions to keep guests from leaving. One of the attractions was Ghost Town Village, which is the foundation of what eventually turned into the Knott’s Berry Farm theme park. Boysenberry plants can be seen underneath the Silver Bullet ride.
Decades later, the tiny hybrid fruit is, as they say, getting its flowers.
“It’s an amazing item,” said Laura Brubaker, vice president of Food and Beverage at Knott’s. “You can put in anything — savory, sweet, drinks — in anything.”
This year’s Boysenberry Festival features over 80 unique food and drink items. There are 53 options on the tasting card, which guests can try six items for $55. Menu items include beef birria loaded fries with a boysenberry consommé, creamy boysenberry grits with Cajun shrimp, boysenberry BBQ short rib lasagna and boysenberry cucumber lemonade.
Brubaker said the boysenberry is what makes Knott’s special.
“The boysenberry is so unique to Knott’s,” she said. “It’s so different from all of the other parks around us. It’s something we can hang our hat on. And it’s an inclusive family event.”